Representing Hong Kong, Dr. Winnie Tang, Founder and Chairman of Esri China (HK), has delivered a series of presentations on GIS, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and Smart City in several international conferences recently.

Dr. Tang presented Hong Kong’s progress on Smart City development in World Bank Group Smart Cities Conference.

The events included the World Bank Group Smart Cities Conference, which was held on 17 November in Yokohama, Japan, and the 15th GSDI World Conference, which was held from 28 November to 2 December in Taipei.

Dr. Tang has been advocating building Smart Cities on the foundation of SDI since an international forum held at Geneva in 2006.

Dr. Tang is a pioneer in advocating the concept of building Smart Cities on the foundation of GIS and SDI since 2006. A Smart City is a city employing the latest Information and Communications Technologies to enhance the quality of lives of its citizens, create a vibrant ecosystem and foster knowledge economy. It is widely accepted that GIS is one of the key technologies for Smart Cities as it can enable efficient and effective utilization of resources through location management.

In the World Bank Group Smart Cities Conference, specialists and experts from the public sector, private sector and academia gathered to have active dialogues on “How-to” create Smart Cities and maximize the benefits to stakeholders. Dr. Tang participated in the discussion on how cities can foster innovative eco-systems and citizen engagement in urban service delivery in the process of developing Smart Cities. She presented the latest status of Hong Kong in Smart City development and elaborated the public consultation on Smart City blueprints and future city development plans including Hong Kong 2030 Plus. A lot of researchers and practitioners of Smart Cities showed interests in Hong Kong’s progress and Dr. Tang had some fruitful exchanges of ideas with those experts.

Dr. Tang has published a blog about the conference on the website of World Bank Group, please read it here.

Dr. Winnie discussed the applications of SDI with GIS experts gathered in the 15th GSDI World Conference.

The 15th GSDI World Conference was held under the theme “Spatial Enablement in Smart Homeland”. It included three main topics, namely Smart Disaster Prevention, Smart Transportation and Smart City. Dr. Tang was one of the keynote speakers of the conference and she advocated through her presentation that worldwide cities should build Smart Cities on the foundation of a modern implementation of SDI - a GIS Hub. She explained how a GIS Hub can break down the barrier of organizations and facilitate the collaboration of different entities in public and private sectors. The presentations were well received and attendees were convinced that a GIS Hub is an important infrastructure for innovations, urban planning, management and public engagement.

Dr. Tang believed it is important for more people to participate in the work of Smart City development and she will continue to present her advocacies in different occasions.

Dr. Tang has been appointed as Honorary Professor of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong.

She has been appointed as Honorary Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong and she is going to teach postgraduate courses on Smart City starting from next year.